A mere week into 2025, a new report claims Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League developer Rocksteady, previously and better known for the sterling Batman Arkham games, was hit with another wave of layoffs right at the end of last year.
That's according to Eurogamer, citing half a dozen developers affected by the cuts at Rocksteady. Parent company Warner Bros. has not responded to the outlet's request for comment. This apparent cut follows a previous wave of layoffs which gutted the studio's QA team.
The scope of the most recent layoffs, which seem to have hit just before the end of 2024, is unclear. I've also reached out to WB for comment. Programming and artist teams were impacted, Eurogamer reports, along with further cuts to the QA crew, which was already down to just 15 people after the previous redundancies.
- After Suicide Squad's $200 million flop, Rocksteady's reportedly back to working on the Batman games that made it a household name
- "One in 10" game developers were laid off in the past year, GDC survey of 3,000+ devs finds: "We set impossible goals and then fire everyone if they prove to be impossible"
These layoffs follow the significant losses incurred by the development and flop of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which ended up being among the higher-profile live service failures of 2024, and the most striking case since Redfall of a single-player powerhouse being crammed into an ill-fitting live service mold to disastrous results. Warner Bros said it lost roughly $200 million on the game, but still wants to focus on free-to-play and live service games. The game's final season and episode are scheduled to launch this month, according to a developer update posted last year.
It practically goes without saying at this point that this is merely the latest in a staggering line of games industry layoffs going back to 2024, which saw companies at every level of development and publishing cutting staff and slashing investments, from giants like Microsoft to countless indies failing to make ends meet.
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